to give us guidance in regards to this project. also, we want to do the right thing they have had a lot of time to launch their protests. we tried to cooperate with them. i will just leave this to the engineers because this is science and not hyperbole. i asked your consideration to review all of the data, listen to the engineers, then make a decision to deny this appeal. thank you. >> good evening. i am a structural engineer. we are a firm that has been in san francisco for a long time. i have been an engineer since

1988 with this firm. i am familiar with the peer review process and i have done about 30 peer reviews. i have been an engineer and i put my stamp on construction projects. i got involved in this project when i was asked to be had another pair of eyes looking at the safety of the project. i have been involved in peer reviews in san francisco. i can answer some questions about that. i also answered the question that the appellate raised about the issue of does this defy common sense that you can add an addition to this building. the short answer is that whether this is surprising to you, this is not just based on looking at

the building but on careful engineering analysis to see whether a building can or cannot take this edition. the engineer of record has says that this can. this has been confirmed by myself and others. regarding the specific issues such as the energy dissipation and the computer model and things like that, we have reviewed that carefully since getting the reply a couple of days ago. i am not sure why the appellant thinks that this was not checked before. if you look at the comment loss, you will see about 14 comments related to checking the strength of the teams and columns.

i think that that's his been adequately addressed. we have looked at the details and we have come to the conclusion that the seismic design of the project, the seismic evaluation meets the criteria that has been used on the project. i would also like to say that in terms of the peer review process and my experience with it that that is typically a constructive and collaborative process. this is a good process and this has been established here in san francisco. the tone of the reply brief does not have the same as the peer review process. this takes things that i looked at and says that these are pretty minor tweaks if you want to change these can tell -- to change these. there are fundamental errors.

i think that those statements are not a reflection of what was said in the declaration and i don't think that they correctly reflect the safety and the terror that has been taken. think you. -- and the care that has been taken. thank you. >> i'm here to introduce our team. we take umbrage with the state bar's position that they are the ones worn out to protect the public safety of san francisco. they have spent three years involved in this process and hundreds of thousands of dollars on engineering. setting aside the cost, the second the state bar filed the appear, they went and got

several experts. shorn steam is a respected builder in san francisco. they will not build a building that is unsafe. we have a project here. all of the sentiment can answer your engineering questions if that is in question. and think you. >> i would love to hear your opinion. >> actually, part of this is not technical. why did you not provide the calculations to the appellant earlier? >> the structure of

calculations are copyrighted. you are entitled to go down and review this but they're not allowed to be copied. we made them available. we said that they need to sign a non disclosure agreement. we have no problem with this. they dillydallied for about a week and then refuse to to signed it and then they accuse us of refusing to offer the information. >> when was that offer made? >> right after they filed the brief. we had a meeting after the project engineers were there and we presented them with -- and we offered to look into this and provide them with the

information. >> there were three issues that were brought up, does your engineering team want to respond to the other two items? >> that is probably a good idea. i know that this issue was briefly address, i will have them come back up. >> the issues in the reply brief, there was an issue. one essentially said that we did not check the forces. that is the issue that i think was a major focus of the peer review. there are about 14 comments. i'm not sure why jack felt that that was not checked. also the idea of when the design

for the cutting of the seals was proposed. the engineer of record would know the history of that more than me but certainly the issue of it is in the comment log. there is one comment through this process. there was some that were entered into this. this puts more focus on the issue. before this, there was questions about the sheer in the beams and columns. ben bernanke >> what about the existing structure? i believe that you can improve

this in an analysis model. usually this will affect how much a building moves. generally this will not changed and things like the beams and that was my initial response to the reply brief and that is what michael tells me he has found. we have run with their own choice of assumption. we have made the change to change the energy dissipation factor. we have done all of that and we have some grasp i can show you how this is really not affected that is why i think this is a minor issue and they are not critical omissions, their

fundamental errors. >> it would be the best person to summarize what changes have occurred from the package? >> i have been appointed manager since 2006. what changed in the package? the question came up originally during the review process and we had just to find that these would crash prior to the the

shears. how we had looked at this sure enough the column. afterwards, we agreed to drill holes. this was an added precaution. >> let me show you. we have seen your log and we understand that this has gone back and forth between the purity or and the city. >> i which is leading up to this. the only other change as that we intended to do this.

in talking to the contractor, in lieu of drilling holes, we agreed to cut it. that is the only change. this has not been submitted because the project is on hold. >> that would be the only change. >> yes. >> this is always troubling to me when you have competing experts. you expect advocacy from some certain types of experts, you sell it in the expect this from other entities. no one here is advocating anything but good principles, is this an option of applying different criteria of what should be done? >> i think that we are all using

the same criteria which has been approved by the department of building inspection. there has been -- we have been addressing this sense 2007. as was indicated, there were actually put into the peer review log and the engineer said this never happened. we're trying to address the concerns. the latest concern are actually met with them and we had inc. depredation and the revised damping and we found that there was actually a reduction. so his recommendation actually improve the performance of the building and actually shared that with him the following day.

this was the day his declaration was due. unfortunately, the results sounded encouraging but he did not have the time to review them. >> does that raise the rerun issue? >> this is the worst case column in the entire building. we have received comments from the professor and we we ran them. what this shows is the horizontal line. this shows the length of the earthquake. the vertical access to the column shear. the orange line's were based upon our original which was

approved. the blue line is with the professor's recommendations. there is a slight reduction when you incorporate the recommendations. the bigger point is that these are very fine details, they are not global issues that will affect the building fundamentally. they are minor details. the red line in the case the capacity. this always stays above the demand. one of the other fundamental issues that has not been addressed is when your columns are controlled, there is no possibility to have a failure. that has been discussed on the day of this declaration. >> the sheer force in that graf

is a function of time. this is one earthquake record, this is playstation 10. this is plotting the sheer overtime throughout the particular earthquake. >> for what size? >> this is for the maximum credible earthquake. >> can you give me this in the magnitude? >> this is not easily correlate to magnitude but the ground shaking in san francisco in 1906 was about a 500 year return. >> thank you. >> if i can as quickly address

the question that you asked. in layman's terms, you ask how engineers can't agree. what i've learned is that there really is no magic checklists of questions that you go down. i think you heard and that the issues raised by the professor are unique, they're simply variations of those that were raised. there was different assumptions. this is not the first time that they were ever raised. there were scrutinized by the process. this is professional approach and professional judgment. >> described the best possible

motives to the state bar. if this was to fail and had been engineered wrong, what would the effect be it on their building? >> i would never want to speculate as to the motives. if you read the declaration, he does not use the word fundamental error, garbage in, garbage out. that is the advocate for the state bar. you can ask them what they would suffer in result of an earthquake and tell also why would they build an unsafe building? >> i appreciate the answer. these are things i am grappling

with. >> would be the benefit of building an unsafe building? >> there is none. >> i have a question that is brought to my mind. we heard that the building required millions of dollars to bring it to collapse prevention state. is this what you're talking but doing with this building? >> i would ask our peer review were to come up and he can explain why this is unnecessary to do a seismic upgrade that they did. >> aren't there different levels of bringing in building two

being able to withstand seismic events. aren't those of inevitability and collapse? can you talk about what level you are looking at bringing this building to? >> the standard that the city applied was the basic safety objectives. what that means, i think the doctor would be better. >> i think your question should be directed to the project engineer, this is his design. >> there were two questions. the first one had to do with howard. the doctor is in a unique position. >> let's have you talk about the project buildings. >> the code says that you have

to retrofit the existing building up to the equivalent design of the new building. as far as the performance objective, the code stipulates life safety performance in a 500 your earthquake. with the basic safety objective which is intended to provide a quick lead performance for an existing building, we do life safety and collapse prevention at the maximum credible which is 2500. we actually do two sets of analysis with an existing building. >> is this for both. >> for a new building, you do this on the design earthquake.

we did this check as well as an additional check. >> i need to think about that before i have another question. >> thanks. i've brought a structural engineer with me tonight. he is the city's senior engineer. we are looking for public healthy safety and welfare.

it is great to that we are all on the same train. there are a key issues that we want to bring to your information. the first test to do with process. the second one has to do with the technical requirements and how we deal with potential changes. the review of this building has been under way for a number of years. in 2007, we began doing the peer review and doing plans. the appellant began to be engaged at that time. they reviewed the process. in the building code, we have two separate kinds of processes for what are commonly called peer review.

we have something called a structural advisory committee which is codified in the building code. this says that in very specific circumstances, the building department must contain a structural advisory committee and that committee is a public meeting. this becomes an open government kind of public review. that he's used commonly of buildings that are built on the buildings. peer review does not mean anything in and of itself. this is where we convened a few

experts to help us review and analyze the methods of construction. we need to have complex methods of analysis like computer modeling. so, the state bar and others have wondered why this is not a structural advisory committee. we develop an issue, our administrative bulletin. there are many many projects. i think that many of the people here and in this room today, i am honored to have some of the top charge to engineers in the country and perhaps in the world

here tonight. many people have been on our structural advisory panel. i think that they all generally agree with what we've done in terms of the process has followed a typical model for review. in all cases, the compliance with the code and the performance of the building rests with the design engineer of record, not with the city. we take this extremely seriously. this is for the reason that we convene. we have done this in this case. we are able to benefit from the

additional structural engineers. the altman responsibility rests with the engineer of record. the ultimate responsibility for making decisions rests with the director of the department of building inspections. as this project moves forward, the director reviewed this material made the determination that the materials were in fact acceptable. the other thing i wanted to mention are the technical issues and i am not an engineer, i am the deputy director.

if someone comes forward in any project and they say that we have a problem, there is something wrong, we will look into that. we are not proponents of the project, we're not opposed to the project, we are proposing this to the uses of this building. but some think that it should be reviewed, we will do so and we will ask the design engineer of record to consider these problems that have been called to our attention and to show how they have addressed to them and to make the necessary corrections. in this case, i would say that that is the appropriate way to go. we have looked at certain comments that have been addressed and there are certain changes and we would like the

design engineer of record to bring those things forward john to show us that they have addressed the concerns and we can all rest assured that seismic safety will be our number one goal. with careful oversight, the special inspection procedures, you should feel comfortable that we're doing what is necessary to make this safe. think you. >> how often does the department building inspections not except recommendations from a peer review panel? >> we have had to indications but this. this is not just giving us the review. >> we have come to some conclusions, inevitably. >> for the